Primitive Communism
The first socio-economic formation in the development of society is primitive society, which formed when humans were in the process of evolving away from the animal world. It is called primitive communism. At that time, private property and class division were yet to happen; the collective cooperative production relations in which everyone took part in the production and shared the product were prevalent. The development of productive forces lead to important changes in the organization of society. The society that was like a herd in the beginning acquired the form of a clan. The first gendered division of labour came. Women took up the task of rearing children, food gathering and domestic work; the men took up hunting and later cattle breeding. This division of labour paved the way for limiting the role of women in social production in later days. In the clan, based on collective production relations and equality, all members used to take decisions together. Closely related clans used to come together for big tasks like hunting big animals. In this way tribes formed on the basis of clan democracy and collective tribal property, production relations, common territory, language and culture developed. By the end of primitive society, tribal confederations also formed.
Family
The humans, distinct to animals, first lived as herds with unregulated sexual relations. Sexual relations among direct blood relatives weaken the race. Thus gradually in the course of development of the society, the ban on marriage relations between blood relations came about. Before the full implementation of this ban, the family evolved through three different stages. First formed the consanguine family that banned sexual relations between parents and children. Then came the group marriage where relations within a group living together as were banned. This group as a whole enters into marriage relations with another group. With this, besides the parents and children, relations between sisters and brothers were also banned. This group marriage led to the formation of clans. Group marriages used to take place between various clans of the same tribe (of the same ancestors) and thus formed the clan-based tribe. The clan-based tribes developed faster. Group marriages led to important changes in family and society. Even when group marriage was in practice, pairing of man and woman temporarily or over a long period was also practiced. Later it became a form of marriage and thus the pairing marriage came into existence. Contrary to the monogamous family, the single pair is of voluntary union, and the two had the right to dissolve the marriage.
Matriarchy
The role of the mother in society was crucial in the earlier period of primitive society. Children naturally belonged to mothers in the then-existing clan relations. The lineage was based on the mother i.e. matrilineal. This is what we call “mother right”. Thus matriarchy in which the mother plays the central role in the organization and day-to-day affairs of society naturally came into existence. Later after the pairing marriage came into existence, man started recognizing his children, who stayed with the mother in her clan. Man wanted to pass on the personal property acquired during his lifetime to his children. Thus pairing marriage together with personal property of man made him stand against matriarchy and ‘mother right’. The shift from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture forced small communal groups to combine into larger social formations. This broke down the equal status of the old gender-based division of labour that existed. At the end of primitive society, the second social division of labour between agriculture, cattle breeding and handicrafts occurred. All these developments limited the role of women in social production and thus the prominence and leading role of women started to decline. However, the main thrust to the transition to patriarchy was provided first by the personal wealth in the hands of men and later by the decisive factor of private property i.e. the means of production and slavery.
The emergence of private property and class society
By the end of primitive society, productive forces developed considerably. Hence, the society reached a stage of producing surplus. Living without giving labour became possible. Some people like clan leaders and priests, distanced themselves from labour and started living on others labour. Earlier the defeated in tribal clashes would be killed. Now with the increased labour productivity that can produce surplus, slavery became viable. Hence, a slave owning society developed from the womb of primitive communist society.
Private property was first developed through a gradual privatisation of communal property by an elite that used religion and war as cover and justification. In the process, women, like slaves, land, and livestock, also became private property. ‘The privileged few’ gradually transformed into clan aristocracy. They started to appropriate communal property. Gradually the number of slaves in society increased. However, the actual process of disintegration of clan-based communal production relations began with the transition to patriarchy and ended with the process of the establishment of a patriarchal family.
Transition to patriarchy
Because of the division of labour within the family and according to the social custom of the time man was the owner of the cattle herds and later of the new instruments of labour, the slaves. With this increasing wealth in his hand, man overthrew the ‘mother right’ and established the ‘father right’. In the patriarchal communal household, women along with slaves became the property of men. As communal property and relations reached an inevitable downfall patriarchal communal households proved to be a short-lived one and single families based on monogamy supplemented by adultery and prostitution appeared. Engels wrote, “It was the first form of family-based not on natural but on economic conditions- on the victory of private property over the primitive, naturally arisen communal property.”
Private property is the basis of the monogamous single family born out of the patriarchal communal family. Thus it remains till today as a patriarchal institution of enslavement and oppression of minority genders in essence. The contradiction between man and woman that has arisen because of private property will continue even in a socialist society. But in this stage, the oppressed genders will come out and become partners in social production. Opportunities will be created for their all-round development. A conscious effort will be made to create the material basis for abolishing patriarchy in all fields.
